


The Well-Traveled Soul

by Lee_Whimsy



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Sailing To Valinor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 07:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2961677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lee_Whimsy/pseuds/Lee_Whimsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo had always been fifty years old at heart, and he saw no reason to change things now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Well-Traveled Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr.

In his innermost heart of hearts, Bilbo had always been fifty years old.  His mother had called him a _well-traveled soul_ , even when he was still a little lad who hadn’t grown into his preposterous feet.  He was too bookish and sharp-tongued to make friends with children his own age, so he tagged along on his mother's rambles in the woods, armed with the stick of charcoal that he used in his smudged mapmaking and his notes on every new plant and bug and berry that they found. 

 _(Already halfway to a hundred,_ Belladonna Baggins said, fondly, and scrubbed a smear of dirt off his nose.) 

After his great adventure, his family dead and his respectability lost on the Great East Road, Bilbo stayed fifty years old.  Time paid as little attention to Mr. Baggins as Mr. Baggins paid to time, and everyone in the Shire knew that Mr. Baggins had even been late to his own funeral.   Popped back into Hobbiton just as the mayor was auctioning off his estate, or so the story went. 

Not that Bilbo paid any particular attention to the local gossip.  Being a scandal was good fun, but he was busy with his books, and his poetry, and his walking holidays to Bree and Frogmorton. 

There was simply no time for growing older. 

It was only when Gandalf explained everything so carefully that Bilbo learned why he had stayed fifty years old for so very many years—and by then, the Ring was in Frodo’s keeping, and Bilbo was finding out for himself what the Gaffer was always complaining about: his sight started to get fuzzy around the edges, especially at a distance.  His hands ached too much to be of any use for writing.

After that, everything was muddled in his mind.  Frodo visited Rivendell, and he brought the Ring with him.  Then he left again.  There was a great deal of anxiousness for a few months, which struck Bilbo as odd because Rivendell was such a peaceful valley.  What was there to be anxious about?  Sometimes he asked, and Lord Elrond would explain it all to him, about the war and the Ring and the warlord who lived in Mordor.  He even pulled out the maps in his study, and showed Bilbo the roads that Frodo and his friends might be taking.   But it was all terribly confusing, and the days blurred together, and sometimes Bilbo woke up and couldn’t quite remember where he was. 

It was odd. He could keep century-old conversations clear in his head, but more than once he had to ask Lord Elrond what month it was, and whether Frodo was back from his adventure yet.  He often had the sense that he was missing something important, and he would totter through the halls asking if anyone had seen his old ring.  “Just an ordinary ring,” he would say.  “Made of gold.  I won it in a game of riddles.  But I’ve lost it, you see—do you know where it is?”

The elves were always very kind.  They could never find his ring, though.  No matter how many times Bilbo asked them to look. 

But then—well, Frodo came back, didn't he?  Frodo took him to the white ships, and the endless bright horizon.  And then, somewhere between the old shores of childhood life and the sundering seas beyond, Bilbo remembered how to be young.

After all, he was only fifty years old at heart.  “Why, that’s barely middle-aged,” he told Frodo.  “I supposed I have a bit of life left in me, after all.  Who would have imagined it?”

Of the two of them, Bilbo thought, it was his nephew who looked old and worn.  Still, Frodo smiled.

“Uncle," he said, "I never doubted you for a moment."

* * *

Years later, when he told the story of their arrival in Avallónë, Bilbo took especial care to describe the way that Lady Celebrían, impatient to see her husband and mother once more, had leapt straight into the water from the docks.  She swam out to the ship, and let Lord Elrond tug her aboard from the sea, laughing and crying, her feet bare and her dress soaked through with water.  He was laughing too, his arms wrapped tight around her, and they made such a spectacle of themselves that even poor Frodo couldn’t help but brighten. 

* * *

Adventuring was apt to distort a fellow’s sense of the possible. After crossing a mountain range, fighting goblins, escaping from an Elvenking, and helping to slay a dragon, even a sensible hobbit might get a swelled head, and start thinking that he could do impossible things left and right.

This was precisely Bilbo’s trouble.  

He had, at some point in his not unremarkable life, decided that he could do most anything that he wanted to, provided that he went about it cleverly and carefully enough.  Or if he had a sword, or a ring of invisibility.  In a pinch, he thought, he could bore his enemies senseless by reciting all six hundred pages of Sam Gamgee’s most recent work, _A Modest Compendium on Plant Lore_.

All of which was to say that Bilbo Baggins was a resourceful hobbit.  He didn’t blush when talking to wizards and great lords.  He had tricked trolls and dragons alike, and was as stubborn as any dwarven king.  So when it occurred to him one drizzly summer evening that he wanted to visit a few of his old friends, he didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand.  Instead, he walked down the cobblestone streets to the little cottage by the docks, knocked twice on the unlocked door, and stepped right inside.

“Excuse me,” he said, poking his head into the study to see Elrond sitting at his desk, writing a prodigiously long letter.  Probably to his father: stars spent most of their time up in the sky, in the general way of things.  “But could you tell me where I might find Aulë?”

Elrond hummed absently.  “Still working on your maps?  I don’t know precisely, but Lord Aulë’s mansions are somewhat to the south: on the eastern side of the river.  Above the foothills by Lake Lórellin, I believe.”

Well, that settled it. "That's enough to be going on with, I should think," Bilbo said. "Tell Frodo that I’ll be back in a month or two, will you?”

Elrond looked up at that.  “And just where are you going, Mister Baggins?”

“Why, to visit Aulë, of course.  I have something to ask him.”

“I see,” Elrond said. And Bilbo got the distinct impression that he did indeed; that he understood perfectly what Bilbo was about, and knew that Bilbo could no more be stopped than the Lady Celebrían, catching sight of her husband across the water at long last, could have been kept on dry land. 


End file.
